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  The weight of her breasts had always enticed him to cup and grope the round globes. He’d enjoyed burying his face in them and suckling the tips, grabbing and holding them as she rode his cock.

  All lies. The desire she’d displayed for him had been nothing but a front to lull his sense of distrust until she’d been like a spider, ready to strike. He was lucky she hadn’t slaughtered him in his sleep, given the length of her greed.

  The dip of her waist called to his hands. He found himself wanting to grasp the curve of her generous hips, and the triangle of red hair covering her sex only served to heighten the lustful rage burning inside him.

  It was with a great sense of victory that he saw the shame and guilt in her eyes as she stood there before them all, naked as the day she was born. His victory increased to see the collar lock around her throat.

  “Come with me,” he said.

  He pulled on the leash, making her flinch as she reluctantly followed him out of the arena. Her feet dragged and she tried to cover herself with her arms.

  “Cease your movement or I will be forced to punish you,” Navarre ground out. “You will not cover yourself from me or anyone else unless I wish it. You are my slave now. You will obey my every command, every desire. Understood?”

  He tugged the collar for emphasis.

  Kittana dropped her hands but clenched them into fists at her sides, un-obstructing his view of her luscious body. “Clearly,” she muttered, obviously defiant but willing to obey now for fear of the consequences.

  Pity, he thought, expecting more of a challenge from her. But that would come. He relished the thought of breaking her, once and for all.

  Navarre led her down through the arena to the ShadeShifters quarters. The labyrinthine corridors snaked under the coliseum like the web of a spider. They’d been given the area underneath the arena, kept away from quarters close to the citizens for fears that at any time, any one of them could lose their grip on sanity.

  It mattered not to him. He found Antarians distasteful at best. His race preferred to keep company amongst themselves, and no doubt the other victors would soon be returning to their own rooms with their trophies to bed and break in their women.

  He knew many of his brethren had prepared for victory, buying all manner of pleasurable devices from the city’s market to use on their mates. He’d not wanted to jinx himself by putting the cart before the horse.

  In any case, with his skills and desires, he had no need of other implements to exact justice on her body. All he needed were his hands, his cock, and her willing or unwilling body.

  He preferred unwilling.

  Punching the key code to gain entrance into his suite, he opened the door and led Kittana inside. The urge to take her right then was extreme, but he curbed the impulse and merely tied her leash to the bed, going instead to wash the blood and sweat of battle off his body.

  She looked afraid, if the wide-eyed glance and quick ducking of her head were any indication. She stood as far from the bed as she could, and as he left the room, he saw from the corner of his eye that she snatched the sheet off the bed.

  He’d deal with her when he returned.

  He smiled at the thought, turning on the water of the shower and stepping inside. The hot water was a balm to his soul, quenching the fire in his blood, and strengthening his resilience and resolve to carry through with his plan to make her suffer the wrongs she’d done him.

  Navarre had come into his current life because of her. He cursed himself a thousand times for being a fool, but he’d genuinely thought by the reaction she had to him that she cared for him. It was rare for his people to find willing women outside their own race. They were known far and wide for having aberrant sexual appetites and few women could contend with that.

  The bounty of their land had driven other races to slaughter them and scatter his people to the far corners of the galaxy, only to rape his home planet of valuable minerals and ores. He’d been one of the few to remain, clinging viciously to what was his.

  When Kittana had deliberately sought him out and seemed to enjoy succumbing to his desires, he’d thought he’d finally found the happiness so few of his kind ever did. He thought he’d found a woman who could keep up with him and give him what he most wanted in the world—a family.

  But she’d stabbed him in the back. She’d only used sex to get close to him. She’d taken everything from him. Every credit in his accounts had been drained, leaving him with nothing to live on.

  Given that he had no other skills that could earn him a living besides killing, he’d been forced to accept the life of a gladiator. It wasn’t a difficult decision, because killing came to him like a second nature, but it wasn’t a life he would have chosen had he any other option.

  Navarre took his time cleansing himself and allowing his tired muscles to relax. His wounds, while sealed, nevertheless still gave him pain. He wanted to be able to enjoy breaking her at his leisure, without causing himself undo exhaustion.

  His mind wandered, thinking about the ways he would use her.

  ***

  Kittana wasn’t the kind of person to sit meekly and mildly and accept her fate. She’d been in the habit of protecting herself, her younger brother, and her mother since her bastard father had abandoned them all to go seek his fortune deep space mining when she hadn’t even reached fourteen.

  She couldn’t do anything about the collar locked around her throat, but he’d tied the leash to the bed and left her in the room without a care in the world, as if she’d just stay there without trying to escape.

  Kittana wrapped the sheet around herself and untied the leash. She didn’t have much time. Men never seemed to take very long showers, at least in her experience, and given the look in his eyes, she didn’t expect he wanted to hold himself back from punishing her for very long.

  She looped the leash around her shoulders once untied and stepped to the door. Stooping, she examined the keypad, trying to see where his fingerprints had smudged the pad.

  Four numbers stood out, and she began punching them, hoping that she’d be able to figure out the code before he could come back. She didn’t think the possible combinations were too high that she wouldn’t be able to get somewhere with the limited numbers.

  Her luck held. He probably hadn’t really expected her to attempt an escape, given that she didn’t have any clothes, but she wasn’t interested in being anyone’s slave. She’d chosen the option of coming as a willing mate for the ShadeShifters rather than face life in prison for stealing an inordinate amount of ransom money to save her little brother and mother from space pirates.

  To her, it’d been worth it to see them free, even if she had to pay for her crimes and never got to see them again.

  She was just sorry she’d had to involve Navarre.

  It didn’t matter. What was done was done, and she wasn’t sticking around any longer than she had to. The door clicked open when she successfully entered the simple code, and she strode into the hall, looking up and down the corridor before deciding to return the way they’d come.

  She just had to count on her luck holding out until she reached the surface. She had no clear plan in mind, but she’d become a pro at winging it.

  Kittana scooped up the trailing end of the long sheet and dashed down the hall. The corridor was lined with doors leading into the suites of the other residents. Through some, she could hear cries of pain or ecstasy—both were so similar.

  She shivered, moving faster. She took the corner at full speed, running smack into a wall of human flesh. Hands locked around her biceps, making her grip slip on the sheet.

  Her feet tangled and her heart jumped into her throat. Stumbling, she felt the stranger pull her back up.

  “What are you doing out here?” the man demanded. “Someone has lost their little prize, I see. So careless. To whom do you belong?”

  Instead of answering, Kittana came down with all her weight on top of the man’s instep. The move stunned him for a spli
t second. He yelled and released her, giving her a chance to bolt.

  He snatched her sheet, trying to keep hold of her, but the sheet unraveled from her body as she ran. She didn’t give a damn if she was buck ass naked if she could get out of there. Air kissed her skin as she ran, her still damp hair making her shiver in the conditioned underground space.

  Dimly, she heard another yell and realized Navarre had discovered her flight.

  “She ran this way!” a man called behind her.

  Kittana refused to give up hope. She ducked down another passage, hoping the crisscrossing pattern would give her enough of a head start she could get out of there even though she was unfamiliar with the area. She didn’t have any other choice but to try.

  The stone made her feet feel like chunks of ice. Her feet ached from the unfamiliar contact. She’d never considered shoes an indulgence, but felt the lack of them now, even more so than clothing.

  The leash slapped against her back and buttocks as she stopped and dared a look down another hall, before crossing over into another one.

  If she wasn’t lost before, she was now. She wasn’t sure which way she’d come. Every direction looked the same and her pursuers remained quiet, giving her no chance to discern their position.

  If the pounding of her heart and her own ragged breathing didn’t deafen her, the fact that she was being stalked silently was enough to make her want to faint. She could feel that she was working herself up into hyperventilation mode but had no way to stop it.

  Kittana doubted she would get another chance to escape.

  Run. Just keep running, she told herself, willing her body to remain mobile.

  Driving hard, she moved down another and encountered the sheet that’d been torn from her body.

  She’d somehow made a complete circle.

  Stooping, she scooped the sheet up and tied it back around her body.

  The move, simple as it was, cost her her short-lived freedom. The fleshly manacle of hands suddenly slipped around her chest, lifting her feet off the floor.

  “Caught you! You shouldn’t have run, Kittana. It will be much worse for you now. You’ve made me look like a fool!” Navarre ground out.

  Kittana screamed and kicked, scratching at his forearms where they bound her chest and arms against her torso. Her legs flung out wildly. She kicked his shins and knees, but he took every blow with hardly a grunt, carting her back to his room without another word.

  The door, she saw, stood open, awaiting their return. He stepped through and kicked the door shut, going into the bedroom and depositing her on the bed.

  Kittana immediately scrambled across the bed, feeling him move behind her as the bed dipped beneath his weight. He snatched the sheet off her with the sound of whipping wind and caught her ankle, dragging her back until she was beneath him, her face and chest pinned against the mattress.

  She screamed but the sound was muffled. She shouldn’t have bothered anyway. There was no one here that was going to help her. She’d missed her only opportunity at escape, and what’s more, she’d chosen this fate for herself to escape life in prison.

  She just hadn’t expected to ever face Navarre again in her life.

  The irony!

  Navarre sat on top of her buttocks, clamping his legs around her hips to keep her immobile. Her hands were trapped beneath her chest, but even if he didn’t weigh a ton, with his hand clamped around the back of her neck, holding her in place, she didn’t have the leverage or strength to dislodge him from his predatory position on top of her.

  She was trapped. Figuratively fucked. And probably literally fucked soon enough.

  “I had no idea how resilient you’d become over the years. I should have known better than to dismiss your skills at eluding punishment,” Navarre said, leaning close to speak into her ear.

  His hot breath tickled the shell of her ear. She screamed in impotent rage, every muscle of her body tense and straining to buck.

  “There’s the wildcat I remember. I knew you would never willingly accept the fate of a sex slave. Perhaps if another had chosen you, you might have, but then, you never thought you would see me here, did you?”

  Kittana turned her face away from the mattress, breathing harshly through her flared nostrils. “No!” she grit out, despising the weak trappings of her body and his greater strength.

  “You set this into motion when you stole everything from me. How fitting that fate decided to step in to join us together once more.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I see you don’t find it as pleasing as I do. You will take your punishment as I see fit. I will accept no further attempts at fleeing my wrath. You do not want to cross me again. Am I understood?” His hand tightened on the back of her neck, forcing a response from her.

  “Yes.”

  He moved ever so slightly and smacked her bare ass. She felt the sting of his palm straight through to her belly. “Yes, master.”

  Kittana growled and tensed and received another slap on the opposite side. “Yes, master.”

  “Mmmm. Your skin is much softer than I remembered,” he murmured, stroking her stinging flesh.

  She remained still, stunned by the sudden caress of his hand.

  “I find myself wanting to dole out all manner of punishments to you, but my cock burns with the need to take you. I think I will satisfy myself before proceeding.”

  She felt the lock of his legs around her lower hips release, and then he was prying her legs apart, opening the tender petals of her sex to the cold harshness of the air.

  Despite her effort to remain aloof and not allow him to see how nervous and afraid she was, she couldn’t help the shriek that escaped her throat when she felt him grab her hips and the head of his cock prodded her pussy.

  “You can’t do that! Not now! I’m not ready!” she begged, feeling her body tighten against his impending invasion. The muscles of her inner thighs trembled with the stretch around him.

  He jerked her back against his hips, drawing her up off the mattress and leaving her chest against the bed. “Why not? You are mine? Or do you crave tender lovemaking from me, as you once pretended to desire?”

  “I crave nothing from you!”

  “No, you wouldn’t, would you. You took everything you needed from me once before. I should hurt you,” he growled, thrusting his hard cock against her.

  She cried out, fisting her hands in the bedcovers. Her heart ached at the pain in his voice, the sound of bitter betrayal that she heard there. She’d put it there, that bitterness. Now he would give it back to her tenfold. She deserved it. Deserved his retribution like no other.

  “Just hurt me. Use me. Make the pain go away,” she murmured, then swallowed hard at her open invitation.

  He lifted her legs and flipped her over, forcing her to face him. Shame filled her eyes at the hurt look on his face. “Hurt me,” she said again, willing the guilt that plagued her to go away. If he took that pain out on her body, maybe it would.

  Navarre’s face reddened. His jaw tightened, the muscle working there as he gritted his teeth and a vein throbbed on his temple. She’d never seen him look so furious before.

  “If you think your capitulation is going to make this better, you’re dead wrong. I fucking hate you, Kittana,” he said, his voice a deadly whisper.

  Chapter Three